The US won, and that is great. Their second half was not great. Welcome to the TSS QuickTick Hot Take. My name is Taylor Rockwell. With me tonight to do this QuickTeg Hot Take is Joe. Hi, Joe.

Hello, Taylor. That was quite the game. Question mark. I was very nervous. In my notes, I said, in that first minute goal from Shaq Moore, this could be a

really fun game, this could be a really dull game, it might well finish 1-0, and here we are with the U.S. winning 1-0, beating Canada, topping the group, advancing the next round of the Gold Cup, all good things. And for a little while, it seemed, I had it down as, like, one of the best performances from a team under Burrhalter or from a like Burrhalter coaching performance.

And then... while it seemed. I had it down as like one of the best performances from a team under Burrhalter

or from a like Burrhalter coaching performance. And then less so in the second half for sure.

I come away a little confused. I guess overall happy because of the result. Joe, how are you

feeling after that first 90 minutes? Yeah, so I'm conflicted and this is partially the nature of

soccer, right? The result is great and it's exactly what the U.S. needed. They were able to top the group, as you mentioned, Taylor, and that means they go on to play the runner-up of Group C, which is either going to be Jamaica or Costa Rica. But the real win here is that they don't play Mexico. They cannot play Mexico if Mexico win their group, and we'll find that out later on tonight. But they cannot play Mexico likely until the final of this tournament. So that's all good stuff. But man, the performance after the 30-minute mark, that's the distinction I want to make. Because I'm sure we're going to talk both now and then in our more detailed review later on this evening about what went wrong for the U.S. for the last 60 minutes of this game. The first 30, I thought we're pretty good. The goal was excellent. It was such a great start to the game. The crowd was going crazy. Everything was awesome. And even the stretch after that, the U.S. stayed in control. They were pressing. Canada was not together at all in the first stages of this game. But then after that, the U.S. got pinned in and really struggled.

So to answer the question that you actually asked me as to how I'm feeling, Taylor, I'm feeling conflicted because the result and the performance for most of this game didn't necessarily line up. Well, let's jump right to that 30-minute break then and maybe take the bad first. Then we'll talk about the good. Then we'll call this one quits. Joe, for you, what was the big sort of, was there one big turning point?

Were there a couple different things?

What was the change from those first 30 to those final 60? So the changes I saw, and we'll go back into this in more detail, is just the U.S. falling back into a low block. Because to my recollection, that didn't really happen for the first 25 30 minutes. It's certainly not for much time. So then the U.S. get pinned back a little bit, which is fine. That's what's going to happen. Canada has the quality, even without Alfonso Davies and Jonathan David, and even with the slightly rotated side for this game, they have the quality to pass the ball around a little bit. I'm not going to begrudge them of that. So then Canada gets on the ball.

And the problem for the U.S. was they just couldn't get out. They could not break out of their own half. And this is the kind of stuff we see with international soccer sometimes and even sides at a club level that sit deep. It's hard to balance defensive solidity where you want to be compact. You want to be close to your goal, it's hard to balance that with actual attacking danger and balancing, yes, we're going to get runners forward, but we're not going to leave ourselves exposed if we lose the ball or if, in this case, Canada, continue to maintain possession. The U.S. really struggled with that balance, and they just weren't clean either on the ball. And the hold-up play from Zardez and D.K. I don't think was very good. And so there were a whole mess of problems at the end of that first half, but they all combined to make Canada look very dominant, even though they weren't creating a ton of super high quality chances. I think a thing that I'll pay attention to at least in the rewatch. When we're talking about that 30th minute switch, Joe, you said I think the U.S. falling back and then you said the U.S. getting pinned back. And I'm not sure which one of those it was. I would welcome your thoughts, but I will be trying to see if that was the U.S. intentionally backing in and trying to invite Canada forward and looking to counter or if it was the U.S. just losing that dominance, losing that strength in their play and then Canada growing into the game. Do you have immediate thoughts on that or should we hold off for the rewatch? I think it was a case of the U.S. naturally falling back into that shape just because Canada had won the ball and it made the most sense. Maybe they'd broken through a press or something like that.

And the U.S. said, okay, that's fine.

We can defend for a little bit.

But then it became like, I don't know, this probably doesn't happen to many people, but a house guest that just won't leave and Canada just kept staying and staying and staying. and the U.S. were thinking, oh, my goodness gracious, this is not at all what we'd planned,

and then it was too late, and they were pinned back.

So I think it was a late, and they were pinned back.

So I think it was a natural fallback into an unnatural pinned back. But yeah, we can go back and check that later. That's fair. Because I think you're absolutely right, though, that it was difficult to kind of find that balance or refine that balance, especially in the second half, because if you're playing on the front foot and you're committing numbers forward in the United States.

We're certainly doing that in those first 30 minutes,

with Sands stepping higher and that pushed the other central midfielder's higher up, and it just

seemed like a much more proactive, aggressive approach from the United States, once you do sort of

sit off a little bit more, like you can't just sit off but still be aggressive in your sort of approach getting up the field. And I think if you're trying to thread that needle, it's really difficult to do, especially on the fly. And I think to your point, Joe, once you do sort of just say like, all right, we're going to set up deeper and then we're going to play with that same level of intensity. Well, now you've got more ground to cover to try to press, to try to put them under pressure, and then there are more gaps to be opened up. And I think the U.S. dealt with that in the second half by really trying not to get stretched and let those gaps open, but in trying to keep it a very disciplined, five, three, two, those three lines like in a row, they did then let those

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